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Essentially in windows it's coming up as RAW type. When I run testdisk, it can see the old partition, and the files in it. when I write the partition info, and reboot the computer, it just stays as RAW. I'm not sure if I'm missing a step here somewhere. maybe I'm setting it as the wrong type of partition?

I hope the attached logfile helps? If anyone can please help, and let me know what I can do to recover all the files, that'd be greatly appreciated!

If a partition appears as RAW indicates, either a faulty boot sector or a damaged file system.
Your partition is available because it appears as RAW.
Another opportunity could be that your partition in your partition table doesn't match.
Diagnose would be, to have a try to repair your boot sector.
But before, a screen shot of your current partition structur would be appreciated.
It's your screen if you confirm at analyse in TestDisk.
If you'd like to, you can copy and paste the content of your testdisk.log.
You'lll find it in your testdisk folder.

I think me, this guy and some other people I've seen in this forum have the same problem: we write the new partition structure, but nothing happens! Replies are always toward the problem itself (disk shown as RAW, etc) and not towards the fact that TestDisk changed nothing on the drive.

I think we are missing some step, like if you tell TeskDisk to write new partition structure, it only schedules changes but doesn't do anything. Due to the fact that it asks to reboot the computer, I'm led to believe it will only make the changes on next startup. Maybe because it's a removable drive, it won't be there anymore on next startup. Or maybe it's a bug on TestDisk that should be closer looked at.

Well, I don't know, I just think that TestDisk is not doing anything on several cases on this forum, and am hoping that someone will give us a light on this subject.

May be i am wrong, but the step people seem to miss is:
if you cannot see the files that your trying to save don't Write to the disk.
If you can see your data, the structure and files you recognize, save them first
to a different disk. The rest of operations revolve around getting the right Diagnostic and for that
we all need some sort of help from the TestDisk team members because of their expertise.
With a bit of luck people get around to read the instructions and get on with rebuilding, be it the Boot Sector,
the File Table or whatever. Must not expect miracles though. After you Write might be you should expect to go back to TestDisk and check if the job is finished, ie.: you can see your data, not go looking through Windows to find the disk.
One thing you have to remember is that you came to TestDisk to solve a problem that Windows either created or could not solve. Whilst this is not true for everyone, it is for a lot of cases if you look through the posts in the forum.

Lito wrote:May be i am wrong, but the step people seem to miss is:
if you cannot see the files that your trying to save don't Write to the disk.
If you can see your data, the structure and files you recognize, save them first
to a different disk.

Did that... I could see the files and backed them up as much as I had other free storage to. Then I told TestDisk to write the new partition structure.

Lito wrote:After you Write might be you should expect to go back to TestDisk and check if the job is finished, ie.: you can see your data, not go looking through Windows to find the disk.

Did that too, I went right back to TestDisk and what I saw was the exact same thing as before, that's why I think TestDisk never actually wrote anything to my disk.

Fiona wrote:If a partition appears as RAW indicates, either a faulty boot sector or a damaged file system.
Your partition is available because it appears as RAW.
Another opportunity could be that your partition in your partition table doesn't match.
Diagnose would be, to have a try to repair your boot sector.
But before, a screen shot of your current partition structur would be appreciated.
It's your screen if you confirm at analyse in TestDisk.
If you'd like to, you can copy and paste the content of your testdisk.log.
You'lll find it in your testdisk folder.

Fiona

Hi Fiona,
Here's the current partition structure under the Quick analyse screen,